Red Rhapsody

By the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining Big-Sea-Water, in a distant Bronx apartment, in fact, lives David Farjeon, 10. Last week the Manhattan music world waited, more or less anxious, to hear a musical setting he had composed for Poet Longfellow's "Hiawatha." Ethel Hayden, soprano, was scheduled to sing it at Carnegie Hall.

Wary of prodigies, critics were specially wary of Master Farjeon because in explaining his career to date his mother mentioned "Mother" Stoner. The latter, a Mrs James B. Stoner, appeared some years ago out of Norfolk, Va., with a militant theory for making geniuses out of bright children and with a precocious daughter, who had learned to typewrite at the age of three, to substantiate the theory. "Mother" Stoner founded "the Natural Education System," dabbled in Esperanto, attacked Mother Goose as "unquestionably evil" and set up an establishment in Tuckahoe, N. Y. It was at "Mother" Stoner's in Tuckahoe that Soprano Ethel Hayden had heard Master Farjeon's work and promised to render it publicly.

Newsgatherers found Master Farjeon quite a normal, small boy, however. He could play with other children; he would eat his meals. He had studied music for two years only. His mother was an actress (Claribel Fontaine), his father an actor (Herbert Farjeon) and his great-great-uncle was actor Joseph Jefferson. That might explain without undue "forcing" some of his immature thirst for Brahms, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky "and specially Mozart." Besides the "Hiawatha" setting he had written only an Indian war dance, a "Suite of Characteristics" and a "Rhapsody in Red." The latter, he said, was "after the idea of the 'Rhapsody in Blue,' but they aren't anything alike." And, "I like Gershwin. I saw him once."

Americana

Of Conductor Nikolai Sokolov of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, his wife (nee Marix) has said proudly: "Before he was twelve, my husband played in the orchestras of several Russian vaudeville companies that were better than the Chauve Souris." True to this honest origin, Mr. Sokolov is described as "playing poker--either stud or draw--when the boys come in for a game on a Saturday night, peel off their coats . . . and Mrs. Sokolov puts the coffee on to perk and fixes up a snack."

Therefore Manhattanites were prepared for almost anything when the Cleveland Orchestra, still in its precocious youth, sat down on the stage of Carnegie Hall last week, for its eighth annual Manhattan concert, and burst, with groaning wood and trumpeting brass, into the first program ever offered by a U. S. symphony of first rank on which appeared three native compositions.

Ruffling their programs in alarm, jaded listeners read: "I. The Pageant of P. T. Barnum-- Douglas Moore."

So that explained the din. Young Barnum was merely listening, as a child, to a circus band. The general naivete of the first movement, the Connecticut hymnology, all suggested the Yankee scene amid which Phineas T. Barnum wriggled his toes in the dirt.

By the way, who was young Composer Moore? Some knew that he spent six years at Yale, two in the Navy, three studying music at Paris, and four years as Curator of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Museum. At 34, he teaches advanced orchestration in Columbia University--indeed ?

But the second movement, "Joice Heth -- 161-year-old Negress," was being played. That swathing sound in the woodwinds suggested her boast, capitalized by Barnum for 25c admission, that she was first to swathe George Washington at birth. Rather an indecent theme--like all operas -- but a good deal of the piece seemed to be built around a Negro spiritual.

What a mincing third movement! Pretty. "General and Mrs. Tom Thumb" was a good title. But that rasping and rattling-- of course they did quarrel like little tornadoes.

Sweet and low, then soaring. What but "Jenny Lind"--the little swede that Barnum made "The Swedish Nightingale." Ah, ah. . . co-lor-a-tur-AH--very nice. The audience stood up and cheered while young Composer Moore bowed from his box.

To complete the program: H. Emerson Whithorne's "Aeroplane," a tonal attempt at flight which taxied furiously without quite getting off the ground; III. Frederich Shepherd Converse's "Elegia Poem," from the melody of an old Negro slave song; finally two foreign compositions as a sop: the Mozart G Minor and Stravinsky's Fire Bird."

"Kadenza Kids"

Turn about is fair play. Manhattan newspapers last week invited professional musicians to write criticisms of a Bach, Mozart and Brahms program, rendered on three pianos and with the assistance of a student stringed orchestra, by a group of amateurs factiously styled the Kadenza Kids. The Kadenza Kids were Music Critic Olin Downes of the New York Times, Novelist-Critic John Erskine (Private Life of Helen of Troy, Galahad) and his daughter Rhoda, and Ernest Urchs, a partner of the Steinway Co. Their object: to raise money for the MacDowell Colony* at Peterborough, N. H.

Pianist Josef Hofmann in the New York Times: "Schumann has been quoted as saying that only an artist can gauge an artist: I wonder whether he was altogether right, tor individual music expression is of such a strictly personal nature, so interwoven with a musician's inner life. . . . The artistic relation to Tchaikovsky and Brahms for instance . . . they were as alien to each other musically as water is to fire physically. . . . But I am drifting away from actual criticizing which only too otten is mistaken for systematically finding the negative. . . . May I not, therefore, congratulate Messrs. Downes, Erskine and Urchs lor having given moments of happiness to those who listen to music less with their brains and more with their hearts?. . ."

Jazzmaster George Gershwin in the New York World: " Of Mr. Erskine's private life l know very little but I've heard enough of his piano playing to explain his reputation--as an author. . . . I don't know how he would need the 'St. Louis Blues' but in I he seemed quite at home. . lege professor-- must have a spare time. . . . That Brahms was a darn nice ch do such marvelous things to a nursery-like theme of Haydn As the themes were passed one piano to another it reminded me of the baseball phrase--Ei to Downes to Urchs. . . . All in all it was a good concert. . . ."

Mozart

In 1775, the Elector of Ba entertained his noble guests palace with shiny floors and mirrors. They were amused I opera, La Finta Gia d'niera tion of a 19-year-old boy, Wolf Amadeus Mozart. Its plot com three pairs of handsome bred people, all of whom find t selves tangled into complica with the wrong fiance.

On rummaging through the n room of the New York Public bary, Macklin Marrow, Presi of the Intimate Opera ( pany, dusted off an ancient c ment, discovered it to be a gotten score of this old opera was presented at the tiny Mas Theatre in Manhattan last v the text translated into Enj In the orchestra pit sat I Lange, First Violin of the I harmonic Orchestra. Flowers f the little theatre (for this the occasion of the Intimate C panys first production), the sm est Manhattanites attended, laug applauded the dainty music, tl graceful presentation. Otto Kahi -- 11 ~s the real Mozart. I mu tell Gatti." This same Otto Kah did not mention that his mont launched the enterprise.

*Educational and recreation colony chiefly pat,ron.ifed by artists, in memory of J^award Alexander MacDowell (1861-1908) most original and gifted musician of U S-- origin " MacDowell studied at Paris and Frankfort knew Franz Liszt (see page 39) taught at Darmstadt, settled in Boston taught at Columbia University. His out-put of symphonic poems and suites idiomatic and instructive rather than conventional, for orchestra and piano, was copious. For voice he wrote 30 choruses andpart-songs, 42 solo-songs. Among his most popularly famed piano music are: "To a Wild Rose," "To a Water Lily," "An Old Try-stmg-Place," and a volume of Sea Pieces.

*Of philosophy, at Columbia Universit